The first Swedish theater had opened in…

The first Swedish theater had opened in Bollhuset and Lejonkulan in 1667 and employed only foreign companies.

While the plays were sometimes open to the public, it remained more or less a court theater.

The first Swedish play, Den Svenska Sprätthöken, was performed in 1737 by the first Swedish theater company.

The Swedish theater had been turned out of their playhouse by Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia after the 1753-54 season, and the playhouse had been given to a French company.

In 1773, King Gustav III had fired the French company and encouraged Swedish talents, and thus, the Royal Swedish Opera is founded in Bollhuset.

A theater of spoken drama had been founded in the same building in 1787, but was not to last long.

In 1788 the director flees the country to escape his creditors, so the actors form a company and asked for the king's protection, which leads to the establishment of the national stage for dramatic art (spoken drama).

It was now that the Royal Theater (Kungliga Teatern) in Sweden is officially split in two, and the Royal Theater (today known as the Royal Swedish Opera) becomes hereafter solely an opera stage.

For spoken drama a new theater is built specifically, called Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern—the Royal Dramatic Theater, to distinguish it from the Royal Theater (the opera stage).

The king becomes the formal director and places the theater under Royal protection, to be ruled by the actors themselves by votes every fourteenth day under the supervision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts.

This rule is quite chaotic, and the voting is described as capricious and temperamental.

In 1803, the actors themselves will ask for the system to be replaced by a director.